Whatever his gifts, and I have no reason to doubt your assessment of them, Mr Moyer would not have been a possible choice for Ordinary given his history of litigation against TEC. It would have been a total poke in the eye to that body. I am not sure that his attempt to hold positions in TEC and the ACA simultaneously would have borne the close scrutiny of the Vatican either. I can see why Msgr Steenson might have stabbed him in the back over his votum but I do not think that he feared at any point that Moyer was a rival for the post of Ordinary.Naturally, we'll never know what may have been in Msgr Steenson's heart. On the other hand, we do have a visual from 2011 that shows how Moyer was at least useful:
In response to an invitation by His Eminence, Donald Cardinal Wuerl (Delegate of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the Implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States, and Chairman of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for the Implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus), Bishop David Moyer (A.C.A. Bishop in charge of the Patrimony of the Primate) was received by Cardinal Wuerl this afternoon [May 13, 2011] in Washington, D.C. The meeting between Cardinal Wuerl and Bishop Moyer also was attended by Fr. Scott Hurd.Fr Hurd, a married Anglican Use priest, was Steenson's Vicar General until 2014. But note that, although Cardinal Wuerl and Fr Hurd were at the meeting, Jeffrey Steenson was nowhere to be found. We must assume, though, that, since he'd attended the 1993 meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger, Steenson was nevertheless the inside-track candidate for US Ordinary from the time Ratzinger was elevated to the Papacy. This 2011 meeting probably fed speculation in the Anglo-Catholic blogosphere that Moyer could be in line for Ordinary.
For whatever reason, Steenson maintained an extremely low profile for several years leading up to his designation as Ordinary. His own account of the process leading to his 2007 resignation as TEC bishop indicates the great pains Msgr William Stetson and he took to avoid provoking Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and maintain her good will. No doubt it would have been a "total poke in the eye" to have done anything else -- but it would appear that setting Moyer up for a similar provocation, with either the ACA or TEC, wasn't out of bounds.
In May 2011, Cardinal Wuerl accorded Moyer remarkable public courtesy. In January 2012, Msgr Steenson threw him under the bus. I agree with the former TEC priest who warned Fr Kelley to watch out for these people.
If Bp-Elect Lopes wants to effect any significant changes, he needs to reconsider the way Houston operates. There was only one of the original Twelve Apostles who operated this way, but he was replaced.
